


Everyone Else but You

by thirdtimecharmed



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Episode: s01e03 The Great Game, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 07:43:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirdtimecharmed/pseuds/thirdtimecharmed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as a gift for Johnlockchallenges gift exchange, for butt-inspector-kirby. Prompt was: Johnlock. Smitten!Sherlock is one of my favorite things. Maybe they’re dancing, or running around London, or grocery shopping, or just watching telly at the flat, but pretty much everyone can tell Sherlock is completely head over heels, except for maybe John. Any rating.</p>
<p>It follows the perspectives of just about everyone else as they wait for Sherlock Holmes to man up and tell John how he feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everyone Else but You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [butt-inspector-kirby](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=butt-inspector-kirby).



            He had watched Sherlock crouch over what felt like a million dead bodies. Far too many, anyway, for one man during his police career. Why the citizens of London constantly decided to burgle, shoot, and beat each other was beyond him, but it kept him busy at the very least. At best, they kept Sherlock Holmes from burgling and killing just to spice things up. Lord knows the police force would have a bad enough time without his help; they’d be hopeless working actively against him.

            The routine had been established for a little more than a year now, so when Sherlock decided to bring along a companion, it threw a wrench into the works. Suddenly there was a short, limping man in a jumper to contend with. Letting one person into a crime scene was forgivable, especially considering the bastard was a genius, but his stocky friend?

            At least, Greg reflected, this Watson fellow was on the same level he was. It was nice to have someone else who would ask Sherlock what the hell he was going on about, instead of being the only one to bear the brunt of disdain. The problem was, with this Jack or John or whatever, there was no disdain.

            Greg was far from an expert, but he figured he knew Sherlock fairly well. He had never seen him this hesitant with a person. With the yarders, Holmes was condescending at worst, and icy at best. Under John Watson’s compliments, Sherlock Holmes was at a complete loss. If he were less impatient to know what was causing all these suicides, Greg would have had the freedom to be amused. As it was, he wished John Watson could have stayed home, wherever home was.

* * *

            Speaking of home, Mrs. Hudson was just as confused as everyone else. Sherlock was a nice boy, she had known that immediately, but he wasn’t the type to quickly befriend anyone. Coming to the flat with someone he had met one day ago didn’t make any sense at all, unless…

            “If you’ll be needing two bedrooms, that is,” she hedged, trying to determine what their relationship actually was without directly asking.

            “Of course we’ll be needing two bedrooms,” John said, looking confusedly at her. As he faced Mrs. Hudson, he completely missed the brief look Sherlock had given him. It was not lost, however on Mrs. Hudson, who did all she could to recover.

            “That’s all right, we’ve got all sorts around here…” she’d hedged. She had then fluttered, and reassured, and made tea, but when she turned back around, both boys were running out the door on a murder case.

            “Poor dear,” Mrs. Hudson had said after the door slammed shut. She couldn’t have told you whom she was talking to. Or whom she was talking about. 

* * *

             Angelo had seen enough couples to know that Mr. Watson was completely misled. Sherlock used his restaurant for stakeouts, not bringing in so-called friends.

            “I’m not his date,” Mr. Watson insisted, shaking his head. Angelo grinned.          

            “I’ll go get a candle,” he reassured Sherlock, “More romantic.”

            He completely missed the scathing look Sherlock gave his retreating back. However, he watched closely as the two men stared at each other over Mr. Watson’s meal.

            When the two ran off, the doctor left his cane behind. Angelo grinned at the text Sherlock sent him shortly after:

           

            “221B. Cane. Not that he needs it.

                                                            -SH”  

            Not his date. Hah.

* * *

             Two months later, Lestrade shut down an office betting pool. Not that he wasn’t interested in the results himself, of course, but he knew for a fact that Sherlock wouldn’t’ appreciate Sally’s ‘when will freak finally kiss his boyfriend’ calendar challenge. (Anderson didn’t participate- he didn’t think Holmes had it in him).

            “He’ll see it written all over you,” Greg explained to her for the thousandth time. “You know what he’s like when he’s cranky. We won’t be able to get a damn thing out of him. I’d like to be included in my own arrests.”

            “I was standing to make fifty quid if I was right,” she insisted.

            “Come on, we pay you more than that anyway.”

            “True. And off the record…”                  

            “Don’t even ask me,” he interrupted her, “I don’t give a toss.”

            He was lying, just a little bit. He hoped they’d figure themselves out eventually, since Sherlock still stared at John as if he brought news of a triple homicide committed with human fingernails to him daily. Watson, for his part, was completely oblivious.

            Sally shrugged, and then there was a call about the fourth holdup of the same coffee shop in the shoddy part of town, and local force wanted Greg to come in and raise some eyebrows. Sherlock’s (lack of) romantic actions quickly fell out of their attention. 

* * *

             Mrs. Hudson bore the brunt of the agonizing wait. Practically every day she heard some sort of domestic floating down the stairs. Or violin music, or hurried footsteps and the slamming of a door that always meant it was time for a case. She watched John trundle in and out with groceries every other week, knowing better than to think Sherlock would deal with it. She grew to expect acrid smokes and strange bangs in John’s absence. Sherlock saved the worst of his experiments for those moments where John stepped out of the flat.

            She drew the line at gunshots, however. Poor John looked like he was going into shock as he raced up the stairs. Then the gunshots ceased, and there were stern words instead.

            Over a mug of tea, she sighed to herself. Her boys were just that- hers, but that didn’t mean they weren’t irritating sometimes. She heard John’s uneven tread going back down the stairs, and then it got a little too quiet. Smiling gently, she decided it would be best to go up and see how Sherlock was.

            He was, in fact, curled up on the sofa in his dressing gown, facing the wall. It was his ‘bored’ pose, but it was also his ‘I am a child deprived of the attention I need’ pose, and his ‘something went wrong in my emotional life but I can’t analyze what it was or how it happened’ pose.

            “Had a little domestic?” she asked, politely ‘hmm’ing along to his melodramatic response and reassuring him that a murder would come up soon. Murders always did come up here, she sighed inwardly, before she realized what Sherlock had been shooting at to begin with.

            “What did you do to my wall?” she demanded, “this is going on your rent!”

            No wonder your young man stormed off without his jacket, she added mentally, but she knew better than to tell Sherlock what the rest of the world already knew.

            Then, the building across the street exploded in a burst of light and shrapnel.

* * *

             He shouldn’t have expected Sherlock to be helpful, or even polite, but Mycroft knew the case would be too good for Sherlock to pass up. He also knew, without looking, that the worried steps running up the stairs belonged to the good Doctor Watson. It was obvious in their heavy tread- but also in his brother’s sudden tension and alertness. Approval at John’s sarcasm was also obvious, and it took all of his carefully crafted control to avoid rolling his eyes. His brother could be cloaked in secrecy about some things, but he had never had to disguise tender feelings before, and he was obviously terrible at it.

            Even without having their apartment spied on, Mycroft would have been able to tell, but he saw their comings and goings. He saw, through the eyes of others, all the cases they solved together, and all the dramatic chases they went through, and he inferred all the significant glances. A less discerning person would have stopped at calling it a friendship, and they would have been mostly correct. The two men were friends, but only in the sense that friends meant soul mates. Sherlock, he knew, was already aware of this. John Watson with his military background and his emotional lockbox would be harder to convince.

* * *

 

            Another powerful man had watched them both come and go, but this man had more sinister plans in mind. This man planted a semtex trail of cookie crumbs for the great detective to follow, leading right into the center of his trap. This man grinned because the all powerful Sherlock Holmes was being led like a blind puppy; being outwitted. This man had waltzed in and out of Holmes’ attention without warranting a glance, and the thought still made him smile all these weeks afterward.

            This man also knew the one surefire way to lock Holmes into submission. How to truly burn the heart out of him. He stole John Watson. He put up a fight of course- it would have been a disappointment if he hadn’t. Being able to add a few bruises to him alongside a net of wires and communicators and a lovely lump of explosive was the icing on the cake of a plan falling into place.

            It was worth it, all his hard work and betrayal, to see the look on Sherlock’s face when he went to meet his mortal enemy and found his soul mate (as Mycroft had so eloquently put it in his encrypted computer files) instead. He was almost tempted to keep leading Sherlock on, to continue the dialogue and watch the love and happiness that the pair had managed to create shatter and bleed out on the floor, but he wanted Sherlock to know _him._ John Watson wasn’t worth the river clay on Sherlock’s shoes, as much as Sherlock seemed to think he was. Once the doctor was out of the picture for good, hopefully that opinion would change.

            It was wonderful to be recognized.

            “Jim? Jim from I.T?”

            The sweet sense of surprise was practically tangible in the air. He could see the frantic conversations John and Sherlock were having between them. The sacrifices they were planning. How one would die for the other.

            “Sherlock, run!”

            He had to learn to control his pets, Jim clucked sympathetically, that was just embarrassing.

            “Very sweet, but I’m afraid you’re underestimating me,” he grinned as the next laser light appeared on Sherlock’s head. Then the swarm, the team in place that was just waiting for the right cue.

            It was his masterstroke, then. He left. He let them think they had won, and then he watched.

            He watched Sherlock rip John’s coat off and free him from the vest. He watched as the man who was cold as ice put a loaded gun to his head as he paced about in distress, clumsily thanking John for his offer to die for him. He could practically see the thoughts stamped across Sherlock’s forehead.

            Then, he came back. As if he would let them both live. 

* * *

 

            In the cab, John had a bit of a breakdown.

            “The Beegees, he gasped between frenetic laughter, “a psychopath and snipers and what saved us were the beegees.”

            He knew he was being ridiculous. Lord knows he had cheated death a thousand times before. Simply being around Sherlock was a daily dance with fate, when he really thought about it. Never before, though, was an attack so personalized.

            “I think,” he said, once he had calmed down his breathing, “he likes you, Sherlock”

            It wasn’t something he would have said on any other day, but he had been behind the lines, if only for a while. He had heard Moriarty’s voice in his ear, how it practically purred to have caught Sherlock’s attention. He shuddered unwittingly, and was surprised, when the flashback stopped, to notice Sherlock’s long fingers covering his own.

            “John. We’re both alive,” Sherlock reminded him, making steady eye contact.

            John was totally out of his depths. Maybe it was the shock that had rubbed him totally raw, maybe the shock had done the same to Sherlock, but there was a look in his eyes that John had never noticed before.

            “Yes, alive,” he echoed, then closed his eyes and winced, “no, yes, I know what you mean. Believe it or not though, sometimes normal people need a minute to get themselves together.”

            Sherlock half-smiled at that, as if he had been expecting John to be frantic and broken for the rest of forever, instead of about five minutes while he dealt with his own near death.

            “You seem together now,” he said, and he fractionally tightened his grip on John’s fingers. “I feel it expedient to add that as much as Jim Moriarty intrigues me, I do not harbor the same obsession for him that he does for me.”

            “That’s a relief. I don’t need his picture staring at me when I’m trying to brush my teeth in the morning,” John rolled his eyes, but Sherlock had meant more than what he had said. He just couldn’t seem to think of what Sherlock was actually trying to tell him. Or he didn’t want to be aware of it. Did he?

            In his musings, he realized, his hand had flipped over of its own accord, and he could faintly feel Sherlock’s pulse (accelerated) against his own wrist. Their fingers intertwined.

            Somewhere along the line, he knew, they’d have to talk about it. They’d have to talk about Boundaries and Healthy Expression of Feelings, and Personal Space. For now, though, they could both just be alive, and hold hands all the way home.

            (And all the way up to 221B)

            (And up the stairs, in the door, on the couch as something unimportant blared on the telly.)

            (Maybe forever)


End file.
